Zarkon

Hey all! I completed the first layer of the wales and the first rows below it. Here are some pics of my progrssion: I hope you can see this in the photo above, but the last wale strake and the strake after that both go under the lower counter. I hope this is correct. I had to start edge bending the planks as i I got lower onto the hull as they would not fit correctly near the bow. This was more prevelant on the last wale strake and the one below that. Here is an example: Hopefully this comes out clear, but if you look at the bulkhead that is in focus, the top plank does not lay flat on the bulkhead at all. Instead it juts out. This causes a massive issue with trying to place the next plank above it as it will cause the next plank to form a gap between both it and the previous row of planks. No amount of sanding can fix this issue. To fix this, I removed the badly placed plank. I then laid a new plank on top as shown below. I then marked where the center of the biggest gap was on the new strake and edge bent it using the mark as the center point. After placing it back onto the model, the curve now looks like this: Notice the top of the plank sits against the bulkhead. Whew! I continued and finished both sides. These next pics I thought was just cool because it shows off what we will never see again as we continue to plank. The underside of the gundeck and bulkheads and supports. Finally, here are a few pics of it placed upright. I hope it looks alright! Lastly, I need to say I ran out of 5/32" x 1/16" strips! I literally have 1 full strip left and some left overs. I did not throw any out. I used all of them that were provided in the kit. So I have contacted Model Shipways ( Model Expo) to see if I can get 10 more strips so I can finish the second layer of the wales. I did fill out their ordering form using their instructions. We shall see! So what I CAN place on next are the 5/32" x 1/32" strips used for the channel wales and black strake. So I will start on that soon while I wait for the new strips. Thanks all! Jeff

Those gunports look really good. Cutting out the top of the gunports isn't easy and I'm glad you took your time with it. Well done! Jeff

@glbarlow Thank you for your advice about sanding the tops of th bulkheads. What I actually ended up doing was to sand down the boxwood gunport frames that protruded higher than the bulkheads. I sanded these at an angle to give more material to the next adjacent bulkhead. I just didn't want them protruding and somehow getting stuck on something. Because knowing me, that would happen! I looked at your build log and you have done a fantastic job! I'm looking at your placement of the wales too to help gadge if mine are alright. Thank you for the advice! Jeff

@Erik W Thank you very much for linking to your log. You have done a fantastic job on your planking! The seams really came out well and the square tuck looks really good! After comparing, I think mine looks ok but I feel maybe not quite enough curve at the bow. But maybe it is enough. Maybe I'm being too much of a nitpick. Concerning the stern, I might make a copy of the stern from the plans and tape it on the model to see if I think there is too much of a curve. I'll also look through your and others build logs to conduct more comparisons of the stern and bow. The last thing I want is too much of a curve on either. That would mess up quite a bit of the planking. Thank you for the advice Erik! Jeff

Hey all! I need another set of eyes. The first plank is the most important to lay the rest of the planks. I have placed the first wale strakes on one side of the hull and would like to ask of you guys think if looks like it's in the correct place. If it looks good, I'll continue with the other side's first strakes so I can make sure they look as even as possible. If not, I don't mind taking these 2 pieces off and adjusting. Fixing the planking now will save a lot of headaches later. Thanks!! Jeff Houston

Ross, you have done amazing work! It looks fantastic! I really like how the decking turned out. Nicely done! Jeff

Thank you Ronald! I agree I really like how the edges are turning out! I looked at it again today and noticed the stain has lightened some. I think that's great! Because later, I will need to add in all those tree nails and stain/varnished again. I was a little worried that if I stained again, it would be too dark. I'm going to take a break from her for a few days to allow the stain/varnished to finish drying and stop smelling. In the meantime, I'll be working on my Cheerful build starting tomorrow. Going to start planking the first layer of the wales! Thanks all! Jeff

Thanks all! So I finally finished planking the other side of the hull. This step takes so long as each piece must have the correct angle and length. Whew. This feels like an accomplishment! Here are some pictures of the other side finished. What I also did, was to make sure at the stern, the tops of the hull planking were as level as possible for both sides. This should help make the ship look much more even when installing the cap rails a lot later in the build. What I did, was to take a wide strip of boxwood (since it's heavier and harder so it won't bend with a level on top) and place it on different sections of the hull planking and sanded down the tops of the planks where needed to make it as even as possible. After that, I tried my best to sand the hull as smooth as I could with 220 grit sandpaper. This took a little while as there were lots of small spots to try and even out. According to the instructions, the next part was to stain and varnish the entire portion of the hull that was planked! I took about 30 minutes to setup my stations. I first used a pre-stain wood treatment coat. I then wiped off the access after 5 minutes. As it was drying, i mixed together a 1:1 ratio of Minwax Golden Oak stain and clear polyurethane varnish. I needed to thin out the golden oak stain to try and keep from blotching as much as possible. After putting on the stain and varnish, this was the result. In the pic above, there was some blotching near the top above the first few gunports. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think quite a bit of that will be painted black a little later in the build. So I'm not too worried. What I was surprised by was how well the pencile edging came through! I made sure to only pencile one edge of the planks. I am glad I didn't darken both plank edges that meet or it would be too dark! Please let me know what you guys think! It will look different once it's painted and the wales/ molding strips are added. But I do feel I finished a huge step in the build and it feels very good! 😀 Thanks all for reading and for your comments and likes. I do appreciate them a lot! Jeff

Hey all! Thank you for all your comments and likes! I have finally finished planking the gun deck outer hull. It really does take a long time to plank the hull on the gun deck. Here is an example of a complex strip I have to create to plank around the gunports. This piece was created for the top of the gun ports but also has to go around a sheave shell. These pieces take a while to make! The next pictures show how far I have gotten so far with the planking. The planking will go faster until I reach the quarterdeck gunports. At least the quarterdeck gunports do not require the rabbet as the gun decks gun ports do! Whew! I'm almost there! Thanks all! Jeff

It's time to mill! I won't always make a post about milling strips (this will probably be the only one) but I thought it would be important to show this as it's vital to the building process for Cheerful. Firstly, this is how I milled the 5/32" strips for the wales. There are 2 rows of planks for the wales (first layer) and each row takes 2 strips. So this means I need to mill 8 strips to complete the first layer of the wales. I always make a few more strips just in case. So I will be milling 10 strips total. The tools that I use for milling strips are: 1) My Brynes table saw ( wonderful table saw) 2) A push rod 3) Another rod (curved at the end) to hold in my other hand to help keep the wood running smoothly through the saw blade 4) The saw blade (3" 90 tooth .03 kerf slitting blade) 5) A 3/64" spacer 6) A jig to make sure each strip will be 3/64" wide 7) Super important!! Goggles for my eyes 8) 5/32" wood sheet For me to get the correct width (3/32") I 3D printed a spacer. I then place the spacer on the saw blade so I could then run my 3d printed jig up next to it for the correct width. This is the underside of the spacer. I placed the saw blade up against the under edge of the spacer (the left side middle edge). I hope that makes sense. The blade actually goes UNDER the spacer as you will see below. The 3/32" width comes from the distance between the wall of the spacer that butts up against the blade, and the other side's OUTER edge ( in the pic above, that outer edge is the right most top edge). I know that's a lot of words. But I hope the pic below helps to clear it up. Then I place my 2 piece jig up against the spacer. The jig is in 2 parts. The bottom part of the jig can move freely back and forth so it can but up against different spacer widths. I then clamp it in place. This really helps getting even, consistent cuts from the wood sheet. I then make a test cut to validate the correct width. The left stick is the push stick I 3D printed, the right stick is curved at the end so it doesn't cause as much friction when making sure the wood is held properly while being pushed through the saw. I also sanded it as well with 220 then 300 grit sand paper to try and get it smoother. The only reason all my 3D printed jig and things are red, is because that was the only filliment color I had at the time! I used Blender ( which is free) to create the models. For filliment, I printed with PETG + as its a little more durable than normal PETG. I have a good reason why I place the wood sheet against the fence and move the fence each strip. Kickback. I tried to place the wood edge being cut on the fence so I wouldnt have to move the fence each time. But this cause a lot of kick back (shooting the strip backwards like a bullet) and it was also hard to keep the correct width at the end of the strip since very little to no wood was then touching the fence. I learned very quickly to never position myself in front of the saw blade in case there is kick back. Won't be a good time for my stomach! It's so strong that sometimes the kick backed strip can tear through dry wall insulation! Secondly, when I position the sheet and move the fence up to meet it, I don't push the fence hard against the wood sheet. Instead, I put the sheet of wood against the jig, then bring the fence up so it just touches the wood sheet. I then tighten the left side of the fence (looking at the picture above) I then SLIGHTLY move the back part of the fence away from the saw blade (very small.. trying for less than 1mm) this allows a little wiggle room for the sheet to not get stuck on the fence as the wood sheet gets pushed though the blade. This prevents kickback from the sheet. I have never had the sheet kickback with this technique. Lastly, I ALWAYS wear safety goggles and stand facing the side of the saw. This way, there's no way I will be in the line of fire in case there is some kickback. When I'm pushing the wood through the saw blade, I go slow as to not cause too much heat buildup on the blade and wood. Pushing the wood too fast can cause the wood to burn and burn residue can pile up on the blade. This is especially true for slitting blades as they are very thin and tend to get hot quite a bit quicker than other blades. Burnt looking blades can leave residue on subsequent strip cuts, making new cuts loom burnt. No good. Here are my 10 strips all cut. It looks a little fuzzy. So here's another pic. Lastly, just these 10 strips make all this sawdust. Quite a bit more than one would think. I need to 3D printed an adapter to connect my vacuume to the vacuumed port on the side of the saw. I know this was a little long winded. But I just wanted to share how I cut strips. The learning process for me took a long time and with many failed attempts at milling strips correctly and consistently. It felt more of a secret art than anything! If any of you have good tips for milling wood, please feel free to share! I hope to start planking the first layer of wales tomorrow! Though, I do need to order some more sheets for all the planking that needs to occur. Thanks all! Jeff

Thank you everyone for your nice comments and likes! They really help give me confidence in this build! Sorry for the delay. Between Halloween, working on my USF Confederacy, and work, I wanted to take a small break since I finished the framing. First off is a little painting. I used a normal brush i picked up at the local hobby store along with basic red paint. The color was called Pyrrole Red. I wanted to know what pyrrole meant so I looked it up. Of course it means a toxic chemical right? Haha! That freaked me out at first until i searched "Pyrrole Red" which is apparently an actual color. Whew! Anyway, I tried to paint each gunport in a thinner first layer. I had to thin it down with water since it's an acrylic paint, but I thought it came out pretty well. It might be hard to see, but after the first layer, there obviously are some spots that need to be gone over again. But with patience and some more watered down paint, I added 2 more layers and spot checked the painting work. With the painting out of the way, its time to mark where the wales will be located. I know i need to use a batten, but i usually use small tape strip to help line off the planks for gunports, wales, etc. You can see this in my above posts and in my Confederacy build log. (By the way, planking the gun ports on that ship sure takes a while!) Anyway, here are a few pics of me lining off the wales. I acutally do run a wood strip across the tape too, to gadge the curvature. But I can't really get pics of that since I only have 2 hands! When I first place the tape on each bulkhead, I try to line the tape up to each bulkhead line first. I don't care if it's the correct curve or not. I use that as the starting point to look at the tape curve in as many angles I can, like in the pics above. When looking closely at the curve, especially at an angle, it's really easy to spot any dips or bumps that need to be corrected. This can take a little bit of time. Once I make a correction to one bulkhead former tape position, I step back and look at the curve from multiple angles again. I continue this until I am satisfied with the curve. I always try and only focus on one side at first, then once I feel satisfied with its position, I move onto the other side so I can match the wale placement markings at the bow. For some reason, I was very surprised by this, I only had to modify 1-2 bulkhead former lines on each side. This is very unusual as for the Confederacy, I had to modify many bulkhead former line segments! After I was content with the curves on both sides, I would hold the tape on each bulkhead former when I marked the lines on the top of the tape. This will be a 2 post entry since they are different parts of the build I'm posting about. Next will be milling the first layer of the wales! Thanks all! Jeff

Hey all! I finally finished the side planking on one side! Well, other than the wales, painting, molding strips, etc. While planking up the hull, I noticed the aft most quarterdeck gunport had a "hole" on the sill. This is because it's where the laser cut pieces fit together, but not perfectly. You can see from the picture above, there is a space between the sill and the frame that I needed to fill. I took some wood filler I had from Occre and tried it out! After applying and letting it dry, I sanded it with 220 grit sandpaper. I then repainted it, and here was the result. I think it turned out really well! I completed the same steps on the other side of the ship since it had the same problem. I also had to sand down the other quarterdeck gunport which I had to cut the bulkhead out of. I realized I didn't sand it enough and the bulkhead plywood was very visible through the gunport sill. So as shown, I sanded it down. I then applied some wood filler and sanded / repainted. It now looks like this. It looks lot better. Again, I completed it on the other side as well. I also wanted to point out that the instructions say there should be 15, 1/8" x 1/16" planks to reach the top of the bulkhead formers. I had one area that took 16 strips. I'll show you below. Maybe I had too much of a curve for the planks? I don't know. But to fix it, I didn't have much of a choice but to do 2 things. I first added another lintel strip above the first one. The instructions do specify if need be, you can add another strip like this if your planking rises above the first lintel strip. I made sure to get a good fit and glued the second lintel strip ontop of the first while also gluing it to the hull plank it touches. I didn't need to make it very long. I only made it long enough to match the planks that needed the extra support. I then needed to make sure I had a good gentle curve so I taped a batten to the 15th strip like so. I then marked where I needed to take off the top plank and sanded it down to make sure it has a nice curve. To make sure i had a good curve, i placed a strip where the cap rail would be and made sure there weren't dips or bulges. I know it's not perfect, but it will be pained black anyway later in the build so I wasn't too worried about it. Here is what the side looks like currently. Please let me know what you guys think! Now it's time to start the other side. Thanks! Jeff

Thank you Paul! I appreciate your feedback! Today I had an issue. I realized that the Y stern pieces were not in the correct orientation. Notice the second frame from the front (Y) is too low. I will have to remove both Y pieces and reglue them. I had used wood glue for these parts so this is how I removed the part without breaking anything. I took some 91% alcohol and dipped a foam brush in it. The foam brush soaks up the alcohol very well! So I touched the 2 points where the stern Y piece is glued to the bulkhead formers with just the corner of the foam brush. I made sure the alcohol covered all the joints well. I then let it sit for about 10 seconds or so then CAREFULLY placed my razor blade onto the sides of the aft most joint. I slowly with little pressure moved the blade back and forth going deeper into the joint. I did this on both sides of the joint. The trick is to not push very hard. The piece then wad able to be lifted off the model. The second photo is when I took the other Y frame out to reposition it. I waited for the pieces to dry from the alcohol and lightly sanded the glue off. Lastly, I re-glued the pieces back but in the correct position. Whew! I wanted to make sure all the stern frames were in the correct positions before moving onto making the port sills and lintels. Thanks all! Jeff

Ronald, I agree with you. I feel the same as to not rush things. This is a hobby to relax with. Not only that, rushing only makes my work look sloppy ( I know from my own experience!) Nearshore, thank you for the compliment! This Confederacy kit is single planked. The only time in the kit where it's double planked are for the wales and molding strips. That's why I'm really trying to take my time with it to get the best results I can with my skills level. Thanks! Jeff

Hey all! Finally an update! I've been busy planking one side of the gundeck. Trying to get the 1/64" rabbet around each port is very time consuming. I can only imagine doing this on something like the HMS Victory! Haha... Here is how I planked around the sheaves. First I took a strip and cut out with a knife the shape of the sheave shell and used various sanding stick and files to make sure it has a good fit. I didn't cut off the correct length of the strip until i knew it fit properly between the sheave shell and the previous row of planking as shown. This is so that if I do not get the shape correct around the sheave shell (which happens quite a bit honestly!) I can easily cut it off the strip and try again. So after it fits, I then marked the correct angles for each side of the strip and cut/ beveled the strip to the correct shape. This takes a long time because it is very easy to over sand by accident and make the strip too short. This pic shows me testing the angle of the strip for the gunport. What I normally do, is plank the gun port one at a time. I would get the correct angle for thr gunport (shown in the pic), then make 2-3 more strips with the same angle and tested all 3 together on the gunport to make sure the angle is correct. To make the bevel correctly, I would set my disk sander to the correct angle and sand all 3 strips. This saved me time and material as I didn't want to measure the angle for every strip. I would then do the same thing on the right side of the strips in the same manor. I think it worked out pretty well. I planked the gunports bow to stern on one side at a time. Maybe I'm really slow, but for me, I could plank about 2 gunport frames (not counting the tops of them) every night. This is a out 6-8 small strips between the gunports per day. I hope these next picture look good as it took me almost half a month to complete this much. Please let me know what you guys think! I need to order more glue, so I might take a day off of planking. I still have the quarterdeck gunports to go too! But at least these do not need the 1/64" rabbet. Thanks all! Jeff